TOKYO — (BUSINESS WIRE) — February 27, 2013 —
Toshiba
Corporation (TOKYO:6502) today announced that it will expand its
line-up of Visconti™[1] image recognition processors with the
launch of the Visconti™3 series. The first device in this new
series, TMPV7528XBG, is enhanced by the integration of additional
processor cores to support various applications, and will extend the
range of use beyond automotive systems to industrial applications.
Sample shipment will start in April.

Toshiba initially developed the Visconti™ series of image
recognition processors to advance the creation of camera-based vision
systems for automotive applications. The processors recognize traffic
lanes, vehicles, pedestrians, traffic signs and more and both the
Visconti™2 and 3 series devices incorporate image processing
accelerators that detect pedestrians with high level detection ratio in
real time.

In addition to these capabilities, the Visconti™3 lowers the
software-development hurdle for customers by integrating an ARM 32-bit
RISC Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ (2 cores) dedicated to
supporting applications interfacing with the image recognition processor.

With Visconti™3, Toshiba will seek to expand the image
recognition processor business beyond automotive systems into
camera-based vision systems for industrial applications. The company
targets annual sales of 2 million Visconti™ image recognition
processors in fiscal 2015.

Background

Advances continue in bringing driver assistance and safety systems to
road vehicles. The next impetus will come in the EU, where the European
New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) requires automobile companies
to introduce autonomous braking systems next year. These will initially
cover other vehicles, and will be extended to include pedestrians in
2016. Initiatives like this are expected to spur 50-100% growth in the
global market for image recognition processors between fiscal 2010 and
2015, from 75 to 100 billion yen[2].

Toshiba has played a pioneering role in image recognition processors. It
commercialized Visconti™ in 2004 and the improved Visconti™2
in 2011. The new Visconti™3 offers improvements in
functionality, performance and software development efficiency.

Main Features

1. ARM CortexTM-A9
MPCoreTM

Upwardly compatible with the Visconti™2 series. Integration of the ARM
Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ improves connectivity to car
navigation systems, smartphones and cloud-based services and makes it
easier for customers to implement features during software development.

2. Single/Double-Precision Floating Point Unit
(FPU)

Image recognition algorithms and software in embedded image recognition
processors must analyze large volumes of image data from the video
source, frame-by-frame, in real time, but with limited power consumption
and memory resources. Some algorithms for this are difficult to achieve
without an FPU, and for this reason Visconti™3 integrates a
single/double-precision FPU into each core of the ARM processor.